Tijuana: Coronavirus does not stop violence, in March, 6.8 murders per day

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat   TY Steve! Source

An average of 7 murders per day has been recorded in the first 138 days of Jaime Bonilla's government, for a total of 947. Despite the capture of 155 murderers in the same period, authorities have been unable to contain the violent deaths generated in the framework of the criminal power struggle between cells of "Los Cabos" and operators of CJNG, Sinaloa and CAF

According to police reports, in Baja California, the majority of the men killed are shot in the head or in the face, the least in the chest. Their lifeless bodies are left lying in the corners, on dirt roads or on board their cars. Very few are strangled. And while the severed bodies reappeared in the crime scenes, most of the murdered women have died next to a man.

Amid the pandemic of the COVID-19 virus, the insecurity on the streets in Tijuana and on the routes in Ensenada continues.

Baja California accumulated 947 murders in the first four and a half months of Governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez's administration. During the same period, 155 arrest warrants for homicide were executed, 19 of these only in the first 15 days of the current month.

Similarly, 184 people have been arrested with arrest warrants for drug dealing. Numbers that increased the arrests of criminals between 19 and 26%, depending on the crime.

The week ending, the murderers in Tijuana showed that despite the institutional efforts and the announced changes in strategy, the dynamics of violent deaths in the entity is similar to that of fifteen months ago, when the President of Mexico took office, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Retail drug sellers continue to fight for control of every street. For having the largest slice of a business that, according to former state attorney Rommel Moreno, in 2012 generated in BC profits of more than 22 million pesos a day.

'CJNG this is going to happen to All the LACRAS who walk on 7A, 11th Street and La Cacho", was the message they wrote on poster-board, with a similar text on both sides.

Because 7 violent deaths every 24 hours are numerous, and continue well above the 2.5 executions a day that were suffered in 2015 – there were 909 homicides in that year-, when the bloody escalation was detonated after the arrival of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG ) to fight for the Baja California territory with the various cells of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Arellano Félix Cartel (CAF). Period in which the executions that were previously quantified by hundreds, began to be counted by thousands in BC: thousand 257 in 2016; 2 thousand 324 in 2017; 3,160 in 2018; and 2,886 in 2019.

Currently, Tijuana has 722 murders under the Bonillista administration, and represents 77% of homicidal violence in the state. The Territorial Coordination for the Construction of Peace and Security held every day during the week; and the restructuring of the State Attorney General's Office, the arrival of 250 federal police officers to the State Security and Investigation Guard (GESI) and the increase in the number of searches and arrest warrants executed in the border city, meant that violent deaths fell 6.3 to 5.2 a day. So the present administration accounts for 140 fewer murders than its predecessor in the same period. But there are still many murders.

The week that ends, between Wednesday March 11 and 19, 69 people were violently murdered.

On Thursday 12, the deaths of this type circulated in 60% of the municipalities, leaving one murdered in Mexicali, four homicides in Tijuana, another four in Ensenada and, the same day, they seized a suitcase with cocaine at the Maritime Customs Office of the port; and a police officer on patrol was shot in San José de la Zorra.